Self Proficiency

Growing up without a TV and watching iPlayer as a family around a small laptop screen has left me a little, it’s fair to say, ‘behind the times’. I often idealise and romanticise a simpler time. Whilst my brother veered one way, making a career out of his ‘misspent youth’ shut away in his bedroom learning coding, I went in the other direction of technophobia. I still don’t understand all the different remotes needed for our TV, much to my husband’s frustration.

From the small selection of TV shows that we did watch as a family (most of which were from my parents’ youth), my favourite was the 1970s show ‘The Good Life’. If you can get past some of the poorly aged and offensive jokes that were very much ‘of the time’, it’s a lovely wholesome show about a couple (Tom and Barbara Good) in suburbia who try to become ‘self-sufficient’. It looks at the fun, but also ultimately the hardship of trying to be completely self reliant and become competent at thousands of different skills, from building through to gardening.

As I grew up, I was always drawn back to this show. I regularly think about escaping the stresses of modern life to a small patch of land with my cats and vegetables. I have gradually become more interested in self-sufficiency, signing up to foraging courses and trying to grow my own vegetables. But, the term ‘self-sufficiency’ just didn’t feel quite right. Being self-sufficient just isn’t really possible. I can’t extract the clay from the earth to make the bricks for my home. I can’t grow and harvest the trees to process the wood to build my furniture, let alone extract the metal from the earth to make the tools I would need to do this!

Besides, I don’t want to be all on my own. I like modern-day comforts and adventures like being able to travel to different places and cultures. I like being a part of society and a community. I realised that what I wanted was to understand how I could develop the skills associated with self-sufficiency to enhance and improve my life, not become the way I live my life. From here developed my idea of self-proficiency; the idea of being competent at looking after myself.

This blog is not to be confused with an expert or ‘how to’ guide. With many of these skills associated with self-sufficiency, I have no experience of actually carrying them out. I’m only just learning how to compost!

We love experts in our society. But many of the blogs and information I read when I’m trying to learn something new fails to answer the stupid questions and basic information that I need to be spoon fed in order to get it right! By documenting my attempts to become competent at these skills of self-sufficiency from the beginning, I’m hoping that others will be able to learn from my mistakes. Like Tom and Barbara from ‘The Good Life’, this will include an eclectic range of things from growing my own food to, eventually, trying to make my own clothes.

If you are also interested, please do join me on my learning journey where I can document the successes, the mistakes, and an attempt to merge the hard graft of the past with the modern comforts of the present.